


with tranquillity and splendor (on the wheels of fire)

by paperdragon



Category: Interstellar (2014)
Genre: F/M, ship the damn thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 18:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2661836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperdragon/pseuds/paperdragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn’t love him. Hell, she doesn’t even like him when she first meets him. He’s good lookin’ and all, but hey, so are a lot of other guys she works with. She’s pretty sure he doesn’t really like her either, but that’s never been a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with tranquillity and splendor (on the wheels of fire)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one setting while on painkillers. No beta, so any mistake is mine and mine alone. I do not own any of these characters.

She doesn’t love him. Hell, she doesn’t even like him when she first meets him. He’s good lookin’ and all, but hey, so are a lot of other guys she works with. She’s pretty sure he doesn’t really like her either, but that’s never been a problem.

 Her heart belongs to another man, one far, far, _far_ away and his heart belongs to a woman even further gone, far away, even from _their_ reach.

She doesn’t like him. Not until he saves her.

.

She’s fucked up, bad. She’s had a lot of screw ups in her life, show her someone who hasn’t- but this isn’t just for her. This isn’t just screwing up her own prospects, it’s ruining millions. It’s ruining _his_ life, because his kids are probably old as he is and he didn’t even get the chance to see them do it.

Twenty-three years is a very long time, and looking at Romilly, she can feel the guilt of it all rip the breath out of her.

.

“I’m sorry.” She tells him, even though there isn’t any time for forgiveness but she’s okay with that, because she needs to say it in any condition.

He doesn’t particularly reply and she doesn’t blame him.  She wouldn’t either.

.

She doesn’t love him, not even when he decides to go and die and save her. Which isn’t as fucking gallant as it sounds.

.

Edmunds dead and her father’s dead and Cooper’s also dead. It’s been fifty one years and the human race is also most likely dead. The only one who’s not dead is her, her and hundreds of human embryos.  

To most, this would be a bad situation.

She’s been in bad situations before. She’s gotten out of them. When she can’t get out, she deals with them. She’ll deal with this too.

.

She sleeps for days. Not cryo-sleep, no, that raw sleep that won’t leave you no matter what. She lies down on the floor and then it’s just darkness. When she wakes up, CASE tells her she’s been asleep for six days and fourteen hours and she springs off the floor where she’s been sleeping only to groan in pain at the huge mental scream her back sends.

She stretches, drinks eight glasses of water and gets to work.

.

CASE proves to be a lovely conversationalist and almost as sassy as TARS. Sometimes he gives her riddles and she doesn’t know the answer until days later when she suddenly yells it out. Sometimes they have talks about literature and sometimes they just play imaginary chess.

.

For a while, she actually succeeds in hating him. He lied to her, and condemned her to a fate of loneliness. If she sees another human embryo, she might vomit. But all she can think of is how she felt when she thought he was about to die, worried beyond her conception and desperate to the point of madness and then all she can do is almost cry and then sort of hit herself and then not.

Crying isn’t going to solve anything. Neither is hating him. 

.

She finally finishes her observation quota for all hundred of the pods over a course of three sleepless days. After she’s done, she tells CASE not to wake her up unless something apocalyptic has happened and passes out in her bed.

She wakes up in about twelve hours and pulls on some pants and a shirt and doesn’t bother brushing her hair. Her glass is filled with warm water and she steps out under the sun and her mouth falls open and then glass shatters near her bare feet and suddenly she can’t breathe.

Either she’s dreaming, or she’s finally lost hold of that tiniest shred of sanity, because there is no way that Cooper is standing fucking in front of her with TARS by his side.

She isn’t sure how many things she’s feeling or how she should process all those emotions, but she doesn’t have to. Cooper runs towards her, smiling widely like he’s been looking for her his entire life and then he’s in front of her and she can’t. Fucking. Breathe.

Anger takes the wheel and she slaps him across the face before she kisses him, and then she hugs him and she just keeps on yelling at him and laughing at the same time and it’s not until she pulls away, until she notices the wetness under her chin that she realizes that she’s crying.    

What doesn’t help is the fact that he doesn’t do anything about it, lets her get it all out and keeps his arms around her until she stops crying, which is a very long while later.

.

“Well that was quite a welcome.” He tells her, and she gives him a death glare that has him raising up his palms in mock surrender.  

“Shut it.” She tells him, swirling the blue-ish water in her plastic glass.

Surprisingly, he obliges.

.

They sleep in the same bed. Well, not really.

It’s just that when she enters her room, he’s sleeping on the left side of her bed and she sits down next to him, runs her hands through his hair and tries to figure out what he dreams of, whether she haunts his dreams the way he haunts hers.

She’s not sleeping on the floor again, hell no. Her back already feels a hundred years old, and she doesn’t want to test her body and more than she has to. She lies down next to him and keeps her face turned to his and keeps listening to the sound of his breathing in sync with her own until sleep comes.

He’s gone by the time she wakes up.

.

They don’t mention it. They don’t talk about it, but they do still sleep in the same bed. After a while, that becomes a habit too.

.

Her eyes open when it’s still night, and he’s not beside her. She gets up and walks outside, the sharp chill in the air unhelpful.

He’s seated on the hill closest to camp, and her hands feel rough as she climbs up next to him. He doesn’t seem to notice her arrival, keeps on looking up at the stars, looking shaken. She sits down next to him, way too close and doesn’t say anything. The sky is thousands and thousands of stars, millions of them, millions she’s probably seen and millions she never will.

She puts her head on his shoulder, and that’s all she remembers. The next morning she wakes up, she’s in bed, alone.

.

They fight, sometimes. Rarely, but when they do it’s always ugly. She shouts and he yells and both robots hide and it always ends up with her stalking out and him feeling bad about it.

.

This time, it’s uglier. He tells her that Doyle’s death is on her and she tells him that she hates him before going into the room and slamming the door shut. He goes to his favorite place, looks up at the stars and the scars in space. He can feel her there before he sees her, and when he does look at her he finds her sitting with her knees to her chest and looking at him.

For the longest time she stays that way, but then she lies down next to him and puts her hand on his chest and feels his heartbeat, the way she does when she can’t sleep. Her head is on his shoulder and her hair is at his neck.

“I don’t think I could ever hate you.” She tells him, because that’s the truth and they’re honest with each other.

“I’m sorry.” He tells her, because saying he didn’t mean it is a lie and she knows that.

“Me too.” She whispers coughs a little and then asks, louder. “Why’d you come here?”

“You were alive. And alone. I couldn’t leave you that way.” He says, and it sounds like news to him too.

She cups his face, softly, and looks him in the eye. She kisses him and he tastes like stardust, strangely and she pulls back almost immediately but he pulls her on top of him and kisses her back, like he’s been thinking about it for a long time, his hands tracing patterns into her waist and her palms flat on his chest.

She’s starving for him in a way she hasn’t for anyone, in a very, very long time and before she can say something about being celibate for almost a century, he’s on top of her with his hands skimming at the hem of her ridden up shirt and she’s gasping for breath.

.

The next morning he’s lying beside her in bed, wide awake.

When he realizes she’s awake he looks at her like he expects her to tell him to forget it, or never talk about it again. She doesn’t blame him, she’s glad to know he knows her that well. But she’s changed, in some way.

She wants this. She’s wanted this for a long time.

She leans to him and kisses him, soft and gentle for a good long moment before she pulls away, searching his eyes for whatever she wants to find. Or not.

He breaks out laughing. She decides to join him.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I do ship them beyond five dimensions. Okay, ugh, I just saw this film two days ago, and pssh, usually I wait a couple of days before writing fanfiction about things I've only just seen, but I just couldn't control myself in this case. Anyhow, I hope you guys liked it. And also if there's anyone at all who'd like TO SCREAM ABOUT HOW FREAKIN' AWESOME THE MOVIE WAS IN FULL CAPS TELL ME CAUSE I DESPERATELY NEED SOMEONE TO TALK TO ABOUT THIS OKAY


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